


Capes and Cowls #2

by Vigs



Series: One Multiverse Over [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: (But she became disabled in a different way), Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Multiplicity/Plurality, Original DC reboot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-07-29 02:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16255256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: When it becomes clear that Scarecrow's latest fear toxin has a magical element, Batman turns to his old friend Zatara for help - but there are some things even Zatara can't just "esrever." Paranoia is spreading over Gotham, including its heroes, and it might keep Batman and Oracle from ever trusting one another.





	1. Batman

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend reading [Capes and Cowls #1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15693213) before reading this story. You don't need to read Children of Krypton to understand it; that's a Superman story set in the same universe, and (so far) the two haven't crossed paths.

Batman glared at the computer monitor. Trying to attach the mysterious “Oracle,” who had helped Robin fight the Scarecrow and offered further help in the future, to a real person had proven extraordinarily difficult. They were less of an Oracle than they were a ghost, with IP addresses leading to virtual machines hosted secretly on private cloud services. It had taken him hours to even find that much, and he wasn’t any closer to actually figuring out who Oracle was.

It was still entirely possible that they were an AI and not a person, although his gut told him otherwise. Something about the way they’d approached Robin suggested humanity.

He might have to give up trying to follow the digital trail and try to find Oracle by figuring out how they knew what they knew. They definitely had access to the GCPD’s files, but so did he, and he knew they hadn’t gotten all their information from that source. Then there was the matter of the help they’d given Robin at the school. How could they have known Scarecrow was lying about which group was getting a placebo instead of fear gas? Could they have bugs on Scarecrow, or in Rick’s school?

Scarecrow himself had never shown this level of aptitude with computers before, but it was possible that he’d found himself a hacker and was playing a long con… but that didn’t match his usual MO at all. Jonathan Crane was far more concerned with the human psyche than with machines, and was too arrogant to make a plan that presupposed failure. He especially wouldn’t plan on letting himself get within an inch of getting caught, like he had at the school. Some villains might treat Arkham as a sort of vacation home, but the Scarecrow loathed the place.

No, the most probable possibility was that Oracle was, or was working for, a rival of Scarecrow’s, and had suborned someone in Crane’s organization.

Which just led back to the most urgent reason he needed to ID Oracle: it was highly probable that  _ some _ of the information they’d given him was false, but which parts? Everything he and Robin had been able to check against their own files or through other sources had proven to be true.

Bruce leaned back and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. A lot of things had fallen by the wayside lately. He wasn’t getting enough sleep, and he was overdue for a visit to Selina in prison. Somehow, maintaining his current level of friendship with her as Bruce suddenly seemed like too much of a risk to Batman; everyone knew about the link between Batman and Catwoman, after all. It was too late to fix it, really; it had been a minor scandal when Bruce stood by her through her sentencing and everything, although he’d managed to spin it as a combination of “Bruce is standing by a friend in a difficult situation, what a nice guy” and “Bruce still trusts her even though she’s a criminal, what a sap.”

The police scanner blared to life, and Batman scolded himself for almost hoping there was a crisis at hand to take him away from this Oracle headache.

“All units, please, oh god!” The officer’s voice was panicked. “Giant spiders, Garvey park, must be seven feet tall--their legs, don’t let them touch me!”

“Please clarify--” the dispatcher began, but was cut off.

“Spiders!” the officer repeated before dissolving into terrified sobs.

“Scarecrow,” Batman growled, and stood up from the computer. He pressed the intercom button. “R, cave in 10.”

Robin was suited up and ready to go in seven minutes. Batman gave him an approving half-nod as they got into the Batmobile.

“Scarecrow seems to have found another batch of experimental subjects,” he said as they sped out of the cave.

“Oh, great. Do we have enough antidote?” Robin asked.

“I stocked the car after the attack on your school,” Batman said. “We could inoculate half the city if we needed to.”

“Wish the stuff lasted longer,” Robin said. “Imagine if everybody could just get their flu shot and their Scarecrow shot every year.”

“Professor Crane would come up with something else,” he said grimly. “He’s resourceful. It wouldn’t work for long.”

“Yeah, but imagine his face the first time he tried to gas a bunch of people and they all just shrugged it off,” Robin said half-wistfully. The teen took two antidote pills, then gave two to Batman. The rest of the antidote was in preloaded syringes; it would be impossible to get pills into a bunch of panicking civilians with any speed.

“Are you suggesting we could inoculate the entire city without him finding out?” Batman asked.

“Shut up, B, don’t ruin the dream.”

Batman didn’t dignify that with a response.

The park was a mess when they got there. Lots of people had been having a nice Saturday picnic lunch, and were now variously trying to fight or flee from invisible things, trying to fight one another, or just rocking on the ground in the fetal position. Batman was fairly certain one of the latter was Commissioner Gordon, and hoped the man hadn’t brought his sidearm to the park.

“Gas masks,” he instructed Robin. “In case he changed the formula.”

“Paranoid,” Robin muttered, but they both strapped on gas masks.

Robin hopped out of the Batmobile with a load of syringes while Batman circled around to the other side of the park. They would both start administering the antidote to civilians, watching for Scarecrow as they went. Standard procedure for gas attacks.

Batman made a mental note to change up their standard procedures more often. If Robin knew what to do without needing to be told, it was possible that someone like Scarecrow could prepare for and possibly exploit the pattern as well.

A park at noon wasn’t exactly the environment he’d designed his costume for, and terrified civilians weren’t exactly the audience he’d intended it for, either. He’d been too busy trying to track down Oracle to sleep after patrol, which had only exacerbated the sleep deficit he’d built up chasing Ra’s al Ghul across the globe, and he’d been exposed to entirely too many chemicals and experimental bioengineered diseases lately.

All in all, he was in better shape than he usually was. The civilians were too afraid of their own hallucinations to fear him or to laugh at the incongruity of his costume in the sunlit park anyway.

He stopped by the police car near the park to inoculate the officer who’d made the original call. The man wasn’t in any shape to do more than sit on the ground and shake with relief, but at least he hadn’t driven away and he hadn’t started firing his sidearm at his hallucinations.

Batman made his way to Gordon, grabbing civilians and administering the antidote as he went.

“Where’s your daughter?” he asked the commissioner as soon as he was coherent. There was no sign of her, and Robin would not be happy if Scarecrow had taken his best friend hostage  _ again _ .

“Not here,” Gordon said, taking deep breaths. “I told her she was being paranoid when she didn’t want to go out. Guess the joke’s on me. How can I help?”

Batman was about to hand over some of the preloaded syringes he carried, but hesitated. A third person giving injections would be a huge help, but if this version of the fear toxin had longer-term effects that weren’t immediately apparent, or if Barbara had been taking hostage and Jim was compromised…

He shook himself and gave the man the syringes. There wasn’t that much harm he could do with them—an overdose of the antidote wouldn’t cause anything worse than temporary nausea and fatigue—and having Gordon’s help would cut down the time it took to calm everyone down and get them out of danger.

“Did you see where Scarecrow went?” Batman asked as the two of them worked their way through the civilians.

“I think he just drove away,” Gordon said. “It was weird, more like a drive-by than a science experiment, even by Crane’s standards. He threw a bunch of smoke-bombs out the window of his car, barely even slowed down. Black sedan, covered plates.”

“Hm.”

“I know that could have been part of the hallucination, but I wasn’t exactly afraid of Scarecrow  _ leaving _ ,” Gordon said, a touch defensively.

He didn’t say what he did hallucinate, and Batman didn’t ask. That sort of thing was private.

(Before Robin, it had always been his parents, but after he’d adopted the boy it was Robin every time, dead in his arms, his fault. Gotham burned while he grieved, guilty and useless.)

Someone ran at him, screaming and punching wildly. Batman took her down as gently as he could, gave her a shot in the arm, moved on.

Oracle hadn’t warned them about this ahead of time. That narrowed down either their methods or their motives, though unfortunately not both.

“B, there are some toddlers here—” Robin began over the headset mic.

“Half-dose, don’t reuse the syringe, keep this channel closed!” Batman barked.

Soon there were more inoculated people and recently-arrived, unexposed police officers than there were affected people. The process went quickly after that, and soon Batman met back up with Robin.

“You didn’t have to tell me not to reuse the syringes,” Robin grumbled when they were back in the car. “I’m not new at this.”

“I shouldn’t have had to tell you to stay off the compromised comms,” Batman growled.

“What, and let Oracle in on the secret that we give a shit about toddlers?” Robin rolled his eyes. “Seriously, you’ve been even more paranoid than usual since you got back from chasing Talia. Did something happen?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.” Sad how that was almost true.

“Then I’ve got to point it out, B: The other possibility is that being exposed to Scarecrow toxin made you more paranoid than usual. It might still be affecting you somehow.”

“I took the antidote. The sample you got was chemically identical—”

“I know, I know. But could there have been, I don’t know, something that decayed quickly enough that it wasn’t still there by the time you tested the sample? Something else that wouldn’t leave chemical traces?”

“The first possibility would have left traces,” Batman said. “Whatever it decayed into would still be there. Any changes to the formula would leave chemical traces.”

“Well, maybe the sample I grabbed at the stuff you got hit with wasn’t actually the same,” Robin said.

“Possible,” Batman conceded. “You said you took that particular syringe at random, correct? From the same batch that your friend was injected with?”

“Yeah, and she’s been acting weird too,” Robin confirmed. “Jumpy, angry, convinced people are talking about her behind her back. Paranoid.”

“Hm.” He’d tested the needle itself as well, of course, but it was clean. There was no reason he should still be affected at this state. Even if the antidote hadn’t worked, the toxin would have worked its way through his system by now. Maybe Robin was the one who was being irrationally paranoid. “You’re sure you weren’t affected by anything?”

“I guess he could have released some kind of gas in the school while I was there, but I didn’t see any kind of setup for doing that,” Robin said. “Do you think the police department’s destroyed the canister of gas they took from the school? We could test that.”

“They should have. It’s not a good thing to keep lying around. Gordon knows that.” Batman considered. “I’ll take blood samples from each of us, see if there’s anything unusual going on there, but even if there is, that still leaves the mechanism a mystery.”

“Don’t know what to tell you, B,” Robin said. “Maybe homeopathy really works and whatever’s making the change is too diluted to sense, or something.”

Batman snorted, then considered. The old Sherlock Holmes adage that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” was pure nonsense and bad detective work; you could never eliminate every possibility but one. You had to actually have evidence for the truth. Still, eliminating possibilities, however slim they might be, was still helpful.

“I’ll send the sample to Zatara,” he said. “He should be able to test it for magical influences; those wouldn’t leave chemical traces. And I’ll put a gas collector in the car, so that next time Scarecrow hits we can take samples if we get there fast enough.”

“Magic?” Robin asked. “Ugh, that would be a pain.”

“It would imply that everyone in the park today, including Gordon, is under some sort of magical influence,” Batman said grimly. “And so am I. It’s unlikely, though. Scarecrow has never used magic before.”

“He’s never done a drive-by gassing of a whole park before, either,” Robin pointed out. “Something’s changed. Maybe he went to Hogwarts.”

“Let’s hope not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, Hogwarts doesn't exist in this setting; Rick's just read Harry Potter.


	2. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Formatting this one was tricky. Please let me know if anything is unclear.

Rick was spending a lot of time trying to craft emails to Oracle that would get his point across without potentially pissing them off and without letting anything slip. Being the link-up between Batman and Oracle was weird. Usually he let B take the lead when it came to questioning people, but his tactics wouldn’t exactly work over the internet. Oracle didn’t seem at all afraid of them, unless they were refusing to share their identity out of fear.

> Oracle,
> 
> B and I are both curious about how you knew so much about the Scarecrow attack on Vreeland Academy, but didn’t give us any warning about his hit on the park today. I’m not accusing you of anything, it’d just be nice to know whether you have sources near Crane or not.
> 
> Robin

The reply was fast, but not instantaneous. An instant reply would give them away as an AI; a fast one could be either an AI or just a human who was at their computer at the time.

> Robin,
> 
> I told you how much of the chemical precursors to his gas he’s been buying. It’s not my fault you didn’t conclude that he was going to do a large-scale strike. No, I don’t currently have sources physically near Crane.
> 
> Maybe you should spend less time trying to figure me out and more time trying to catch Scarecrow.
> 
> Oracle

Wow, rude. Rick decided not to write back right away. Getting Oracle into a more cooperative frame of mind would probably work better if he wasn’t irritated while he was writing to them. In the meantime, thinking about people who were always at their computers had reminded him to check on Babs. She’d been touchier and jumpier than usual since the attack on the school; understandable, but it did also make him more suspicious about the fear toxin having lasting effects, since before the park today she and Bruce had been the only people who’d been dosed.

Whenever anyone asked what Rick’s screen name meant he’d do a sick standing backflip in front of them, at least if they asked in person. (Everyone knew he was a gymnast, and a good one, so it wasn’t giving anything away.) He’d asked Babs what hers meant, and she’d made him read a bunch of Vonnegut.

 **alwaysbeflipping:** hey babs u there

 **choose_a_foma** : Yeah what’s up?

 **alwaysbeflipping:** just bored

 **alwaysbeflipping:** i demand entertainment

 **choose_a_foma** : So read a book

 **alwaysbeflipping:** you always suggest that

 **choose_a_foma** : That’s because you need to read more

 **alwaysbeflipping:** don wanna

 **choose_a_foma** : omg are you five

 **alwaysbeflipping:** dont joke, u know im a 10

 **choose_a_foma** : *headdesk*

Rick grinned and started writing his email to Oracle. It was sort of an awkward setup, with the Oracle-infected laptop on his lap while he sat at his desk, but he could make it work.

> Oracle,
> 
> It’d be easier for us to do that if you’d tell us who you are and where you’re getting your information. If B and I went around trusting people all the time, we’d probably be dead.
> 
> If you don’t want to tell us because you have some kind of criminal past, that wouldn’t keep us from working with you. B’s worked with Catwoman before, even when she was still a thief.
> 
> Robin

It took them longer to respond to that one.

 **choose_a_foma** : u g h I hate this essay Mrs. H is having us do

 **choose_a_foma** : “Write about the themes in Hamlet, btw these are the themes in Hamlet”

 **choose_a_foma** : somehow “Hamlet is a whiny manbaby and needs to get off his butt” didn’t make the themes list

 **alwaysbeflipping:** ur too harsh on the guy

 **alwaysbeflipping:** his dad just died and then he found out that ghosts are real

 **alwaysbeflipping:** id be too busy flipping my shit for any revenge-murders too

> Robin,
> 
> I have never committed a violent crime and I’ve never stolen anything. I’ve done a lot of hacking, but you already know that, and I’m pretty sure you and Batman do that too.
> 
> Since I have no interest in sleeping with Batman or going to prison, the Catwoman comparison isn’t particularly appealing. I’m helping on my own terms, take it or leave it.
> 
> Oracle

Rick frowned at that.

> Catwoman turned herself in, don’t put that on us.
> 
> B’s not willing to trust any of the information from you until he knows something about you. Sorry.
> 
> Robin

**choose_a_foma** : Well you’d be the expert

 **choose_a_foma** : ...shit, I meant you’d be the expert at flipping and/or flipping your shit

 **choose_a_foma** : not like

 **choose_a_foma** : the rest of it

 **alwaysbeflipping:** oh good

 **alwaysbeflipping:** for a sec i thought you knew about all the ghostly visitations i get

 **choose_a_foma** : I mean that frigging mansion you live in is obv haunted, but I don’t know the specifics

 **alwaysbeflipping:** nah alfred ghostbusts it every week

> What about you? Are you willing to trust me?
> 
> Oracle

Damn, he had sort of implied that with his last email, hadn’t he? Sure, he was more inclined to trust Oracle than Bruce was—he’d already trusted them once and it had turned out fine—but he shouldn’t make it seem like there was some kind of rift between them that could be exploitable.

> Oracle,
> 
> He and I are a team. I’m following his lead on this.
> 
> Robin

**choose_a_foma** : He seems to be a man of many talents

 **alwaysbeflipping:** oh yeah, b and i would totally die without him

 **alwaysbeflipping:** wed either starve to death or set ourselves on fire trying to use the stove

> Fine. I’ll keep your identities secret anyway, Richard Grayson. You’re welcome. And tell Bruce “you’re welcome” from me too.
> 
> Oracle

Maybe the reason B had been acting so paranoid was because some unknown, possibly-AI possibly-enemy knew their identities. It freaked Rick out a bit too.

 **choose_a_foma** : You’d better not be expecting me to cook for you in college

 **alwaysbeflipping:** nah i was figuring id just eat pizza all day every day

 **choose_a_foma** : Gonna lose that six-pack you’re so proud of if you do that

 **alwaysbeflipping:** not if i parkour my way to all my classes

> Oracle,
> 
> I’m not confirming or denying your guess. Are you willing to tell us how you arrived at that conclusion?
> 
> Robin

**choose_a_foma** : That is a flawless plan that definitely can’t go wrong at all.

 **alwaysbeflipping:** thanks for supporting my goals

 **choose_a_foma** : Your pizza and parkour goals?

 **choose_a_foma** : I’m just hoping your pizza-greasy hands slip and we can be wheelchair buddies

 **alwaysbeflipping:** will u set me up with a sweet rig like yours if i break my back?

> Robin,
> 
> No. I would let you know if it was some kind of hole in your security, but it’s not. I doubt the process I used will be replicated, but it would be pretty difficult for you to keep it from happening.
> 
> Oracle

Well that was just cryptic as hell.

> For someone who wants us to trust you, you’re being awfully vague and threatening.
> 
> Robin

**choose_a_foma** : Sweet rig, yes

 **choose_a_foma** : Like mine, no

 **choose_a_foma** : You couldn’t handle this level of awesome.

 **alwaysbeflipping:** yeah thats prolly true

> Robin,
> 
> Let me know if you decide to trust me. Otherwise I don’t think we have much to say to each other.
> 
> Oracle

Rick sighed and rubbed his eyes. Oracle was almost as stubborn and paranoid as Batman. If it was up to Rick, he’d take a “trust but verify” stance on Oracle’s intel, but he’d been thoroughly vetoed on that.

“The whole operation at the school could have been a setup to gain your trust,” Batman had lectured him. “We know nothing about Oracle’s identity, methods, or motives. Using any of the information they gave us would put us in their power.”

“We’re already sort of in their power,” Rick pointed out. “They know who we are, and they haven’t done anything with that. And trusting them was the right call at the school. A bunch of kids would have gotten exposed if I hadn’t.”

“You were on your own, you took a risk, and it paid off. I’m glad it did. But you’re not on your own now, and we are not taking that risk.” Batman’s face was implacable.

“Even though you know your judgment might be compromised?” Rick asked.

“If Zatara confirms that there was magic in the sample, we’ll revisit the issue. Until then, it’s closed.”

“Fair enough,” Rick sighed. He didn’t really expect Zatara to find magic in the toxin. Could you even do that, combine sorcery and chemistry that way? It wasn’t something Crane had done before, anyway.

And when Zatara confirmed that there was no magic in it, Bruce would feel like he’d proven that he wasn’t being overly paranoid. Rick would have to find some other mechanism by which a chemically identical toxin could have a different effect, and he couldn’t think of anything.

If the new toxin caused long-term paranoia somehow, and Scarecrow kept exposing as many people as he could, things could get really bad. Rick gnawed his lip. He wished he could ask Oracle if there was any indication that Scarecrow was working with someone new, but there hadn’t been anything like that in the information drop he already went through, and Batman didn’t want him to ask for any more.

Something was off, and he needed to figure it out fast.


	3. Scarecrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: very brief mention of inappropriate student/teacher relationships

The attack on the park had gone perfectly. Giddy with victory, Jonathan Crane pulled off his mask as soon as the group of them were safely back at the hideout so that he could kiss his darling new disciple.

“I’m sure Batman will be scurrying around the park administering his antidote soon enough,” he said, “and he’ll think he’s solved the problem. Hah! We’re unstoppable together, my dear.”

The Sorceress smiled up at him, her soft purple hair gently brushing against his hands where he held her. She was nearly as tall as he was, and nearly as thin, although she was slender where he was bony and gangly. Although she was by far the most objectively beautiful woman he’d ever been with, his favorite feature of hers was her eyes. They looked almost pupilless unless you were close enough to see that her irises and pupils were silver; a side effect, she’d told him, of a ritual she’d undertaken to increase her power.

“Soon you’ll have Gotham on its knees,” she told him. “I can hardly wait. Is your next batch of fear gas almost ready for me to perform the ritual?”

“I’ll go check,” he said, giving her another quick kiss before he went to check on the laboratory. He loved how passionate she was about his dreams. She had sought him out, placing her magical talents at his disposal. It hadn’t been clear to him at first how she could help, but she had a knack for asking just the right questions to spark creativity in him.

She made his work better, made his life better—made him a better man, for certain definitions of “better.” What a gift she was.

“It’s ready,” he told her, returning to where she waited for him. “But I thought perhaps we could… celebrate today’s victory first?”

“I wouldn’t want to risk your great dream, Professor,” she said. “We can celebrate after.”

He’d told her to call him Jonathan, and mostly she did, but he had to admit it made him a little weak in the knees when she called him Professor. Back when he actually worked for the university, he’d never been inappropriate with any of his students—not sexually inappropriate, anyway; he had started testing some of his concoctions on them before the end—but that was one of the benefits of breaking free of conventional morality, wasn’t it?

His brilliant student, his lover, his disciple; the Sorceress was all that and more. She was eager to learn about the chemistry of fear, the science of emotion, and it was a delight to teach her. Her deft administration meant that he only had to focus on the big picture of his plans; she took care of the little details. He could hardly imagine how he’d gotten by without her.

Her name wasn’t “Sorceress,” of course, any more than his was “Scarecrow.” In secret, in the dead of night, she’d whispered to him that her name was Tala, but that a mage’s true name could be used against them should their enemies discover it, and asked that he only ever call her Sorceress. He was happy enough having that knowledge entrusted to him that he didn’t feel the need to actually use it.

The ritual she performed to enhance his fear chemicals took some time. He’d never had any inclination towards magic—hadn’t even believed in it for most of his life—but she took care of the magical side of things completely. The only work he really had to do any longer was the chemistry, and even then she was at his side, avidly observing and making notes.

“It’s finished,” she told him, leaving the laboratory and smiling at him. “As soon as it’s finished catalyzing, we’ll have another batch ready to go.”

“Excellent, my dear,” he said proudly. “I think perhaps City Hall will be our next target.”

“What a wonderful idea,” she said, gazing at him adoringly. “I didn’t realize we were ready for such a bold move. We’ve only managed to affect a tiny portion of the city’s residents, but between the two of us, we’ve created something so powerful that it will be enough to keep there from being too much security around the mayor.”

“That may be a bit premature of you,” he said indulgently. “This is a delicate stage. It’s unlikely that anyone has determined yet that the effects of the gas are longer-lasting. Moving too quickly could be hazardous.”

“But you have a brilliant plan for dealing with that, I’m sure,” the Sorceress said with a smile. “A way to keep the police or Batman from being a problem.”

“Hmm, yes,” Jonathan said. “Of course. We’ve only gotten to a few of the police force yet, although I think I recognized the commissioner at the park. Perhaps it would be wiser to go after the GCPD first.”

“Oh, how clever,” she said. “We can set something up in the ventilation system at police headquarters, just like your brilliant plan for the science lab at that school.”

“Well,” he said modestly, “I have been doing this for quite some time, you know. Your assistance has brought my efforts to another level, of course, but these kinds of plans are second-nature to me.”

“How will you sneak the gas into the building?” she asked. He loved her expression of rapt attention. He always thought more clearly when he talked things out with her, made better plans, as if she was his good luck charm.

“There are a few options,” he said. “For instance, we could sneak some in under cover of darkness.”

“Oh, but that would risk drawing Batman’s attention, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes it would.” He smiled indulgently at her. “You’ve learned so quickly, my dear.”

“Well, you’re such an excellent teacher,” she said. “I bet you’re really going to walk right in in the middle of the day and hook it up to their ventilation system, aren’t you? You could disguise your men as HVAC repairman and no one would ever look twice.”

“Very good, my dear,” he said proudly. “That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Would you like me to take care of procuring a vehicle and uniforms for the infiltration?”

“That would be very helpful of you,” he said. “But enough talk of the future! We should celebrate today’s victory.”

“Of course,” the Sorceress said, her silver eyes shining up at him. “I would like nothing more.”

His clever, beautiful, devoted assistant. Fear was still an end in and of itself, of course, but the power that inspiring fear would bring him meant more now, because he could use it to seat her by his side and shower her in jewels.

In the meantime, he showered her in kisses instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Talia is already in this story (yes, she's coming back), Tala will mostly be going by other names, to try to make things a little less confusing.


	4. Batman

Alfred woke Bruce at 10 in the morning, even though he’d been up until 7 am trying to find some trace of Scarecrow or Oracle without success.

“Is the house on fire?” Bruce grumbled sleepily.

“No, sir, but I believe you’ll want to take this call,” Alfred said, mercilessly opening the curtains to let daylight stream in. “Mr. Zatara is on the secure line with urgent news.”

Batman sat up, instantly awake. Zatara had some idea of his schedule; he wouldn’t have called this early or said it was urgent unless there  _ was _ magic in the serum.

Alfred handed him the phone and a cup of coffee. Bruce gave him a grateful nod.

“Zatara, I assume you wouldn’t wake me up this early with good news,” he said, and took a long swig of coffee.

“I keep performer’s hours,” Zatara reminded him. “It’s early for me too. The serum isn’t obviously magical, but I started a ritual last night to test it more thoroughly, and I just woke up and saw the results. There’s definitely magic in it, and it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

Batman’s stomach twisted for a moment. He hated it when there were magical problems in his city. There was so little that he could to to prepare for them.

“Could Scarecrow have developed some latent talent?” he asked.

“No, whoever did this has been studying for at least a decade,” Zatara said. “It’s incredibly subtle. Like I said, I couldn’t even tell it was magical at first. I’m still not entirely sure what it’s doing, only that it’s interacting with the chemical effects of the serum somehow. It would help if I could examine someone who’s been exposed.”

“I’ll buy you a ticket to Gotham—”

“It would be much easier to perform the examination here,” Zatara interrupted. “I can’t be sure what tools or components I’ll need, and not all of my supplies can go through airport security.”

Batman grimaced. He really didn’t want to leave the city right now. Maybe he could send Rick’s friend? But that would mean blowing Zatara’s cover as a stage magician to a teenager—the man was good, but he probably couldn’t make a series of magical experiments look like a stage magic show, especially to someone who was both purportedly very intelligent and possibly experiencing magically-induced paranoia. That wasn’t exactly ideal even if Batman could do it without exposing his own identity, which would be difficult in and of itself.

Anything could happen to the city if he left, but he was compromised. For all he knew, there was some sort of delayed mind control spell in the serum. Scarecrow, or his posited magical accomplice, could snap their fingers and have him under their sway, or perhaps throw him back into a state of panic that the antidote would be ineffective against. Leaving Gotham to Robin for a night might be safer.

“Fine. I’ll be there in a few hours,” he said.

“I was wondering whether you’d been exposed,” Zatara said. “Have you noticed any aftereffects?”

“No, but Rick says I’ve been more paranoid than usual.” Rick and Zatara had met years ago, when Rick’s training as Robin was just starting, so that Zatara could test him for magical potential. Like Bruce, he didn’t have a speck of it.

“That does seem like a possibility,” Zatara said. “Subtly extending the serum’s effects would fit the information I have so far, but I need more.”

“Will you be able to counteract it?”

“It’ll be tricky,” Zatara said doubtfully. “I’m not a chemist, and the combination of magic and chemistry here is, as far as I know, unprecedented. Bring some of the antidote with you. I may be able to duplicate the effect and magically enhance the antidote the same way.”

“If you need help, I may be able to call in a favor,” Batman said reluctantly. He really preferred having Jason Blood in his debt. Things tended to get messy when it was the other way around.

“Unless it’s from someone who knows chemistry and magic both, we’d probably just get in each others’ way,” Zatara said. “And I don’t know of anyone who fits that description. Most people go in for magic  _ or _ science, not both.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Batman reminded him. “I’ll be in Light City in a few hours. Be ready.”

“I’ll have Zatanna do the show tonight,” Zatara said.

“Zatanna?” Bruce asked, surprised. The last time he’d seen Zatara’s daughter she’d been a child. “Isn’t she… what, thirteen?”

“Fifteen,” Zatara said proudly. “But she can run my show just as well as I can. We’ve done it before; a few illusion spells to have her looking and sounding like me, so the audience thinks they’re getting who they paid for, and it goes off without a hitch. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Batman hung up.

“Will you be taking the Batwing or your private jet, sir?” Alfred asked.

“Private jet, I think,” he said. “No one’s going to question Bruce Wayne suddenly dropping everything to fly to Nevada.”

Zatara had been a fixture of Light City showbusiness for years, occasionally moving from one venue to another but never leaving the city entirely. Apparently it was a “place of power” for him. He’d tried to explain what that meant—something about illusion magic and pretending to be a stage magician and the nonmagical illusions the gambling industry specialized in working in harmony—but apparently it was one of those concepts you couldn’t really explain; you either understood it in your bones, or you didn’t.

Batman didn’t. Initially, he’d planned to learn magic along with the myriad other skills he’d acquired in pursuit of his Mission. He’d approached Zatara for that purpose, and had expected to have to persevere through a lot of “a magician never reveals his secrets” and “oh, no, this is just  _ stage _ magic” nonsense before the man would agree to teach him. He’d been through that process before, with martial arts masters who “didn’t take students” and so on. Instead, Zatara had been surprisingly straightforward.

“I would teach you if I could,” he’d said. “I can see that you have the drive for it. But magic requires a certain inborn aptitude. It’s probably a genetic quality, or something like it; power tends to run in families. Everyone has a certain limit to how much mystical energy they can wield, and for most people, including you, that means none at all.”

It had been quite a blow to him at the time. Some skills had been more difficult for him than others, but he’d never entirely failed to master something he set out to learn until Zatara told him there was no possibility of success—not a slim possibility, he’d overcome plenty of those, but none at all.

He’d spent a few months in Light City anyway, learning escape artistry, sleight of hand, and showmanship from Zatara and honing his ability to spot pickpockets and card counters in the casinos. Zatara was willing to consult whenever Batman needed magical assistance, and had rarely asked for anything in return (although Bruce had given him a sizeable college fund for Zatanna when the girl was born).

Years later, when he met Jason Blood, he asked the man for a second opinion and was told essentially the same thing; he was entirely lacking in “magical potentiality.” The existence of a skill that he was unable to learn  _ almost _ didn’t rankle any longer.

“When Rick gets home from school, tell him he was right,” Bruce told Alfred. “I’ll let him know as soon as I know more, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“You’re being remarkably calm about this,” Alfred observed. “Particularly for someone who’s supposedly under the influence of fear-inducing magic.”

“Scarecrow usually tries to cause panic,” Bruce said. “That’s harder to work through. If I couldn’t function while paranoid—”

“You wouldn’t be able to function at all,” Alfred said drily.

“Exactly. I hope Zatara will have something he needs me to do for these tests, though. If I’m stuck sitting there and  _ waiting _ while Robin’s patrolling on his own, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

“I’ve heard good things about sudoku,” Alfred said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I renamed Las Vegas to Light City to match the DC city-naming scheme better.


	5. Robin

So on the one hand, it was pretty cool that B would trust Rick to watch the city on his own again so soon. Rick must have really impressed him if even a magically-extra-paranoid Batman was okay with leaving the city to him.

On the other hand, Scarecrow was sort of on a rampage and was using  _ magic _ now, Rick’s best friend and Batman’s biggest ally (other than Rick and Alfred, obviously) had both been exposed—and man, the Gordon house must just be a mess right now—and the only defense Rick had against Scarecrow gas was the antitoxin that he was now certain didn’t completely work. Would gas masks even keep out magic?

So yeah, he actually would have super preferred to have Batman around right now. Maybe B would have figured out what was going to happen at police headquarters  _ before _ it got pumped full of fear gas.

With his possibly-useless gas mask firmly in place and a box of partly-useless antidote syringes in hand, Robin entered the building full of irrational, terrified, and well-armed people. A gunshot rang out and he winced, hoping fervently that whatever that officer thought they were shooting at hadn’t happened to be in the same place as another officer.

Honestly, he was just lucky that nobody seemed to be making a break for it. A bunch of hallucinating police officers running through the city would not have made for a good time. One person jumped out a window, but they were only on the second floor, and Robin quickly got the antidote into them and confirmed that they weren’t seriously injured.

One down, who knew how many more to go.

When he opened the door, it became clear why nobody had been leaving that way. Jim Gordon, wearing a gas mask and armed with a taser, was standing in the doorway, incapacitating anyone who looked like they were going to run for it or hurt somebody.

“Been keeping this thing on me ever since the park,” Gordon said, tapping the taser against his gas mask. “Where’s Batman?”

Of course. Gordon’s paranoia had led to him taking extra precautions that were now keeping him safe, the same way Babs’ paranoia had kept her out of the park. Constantly afraid wasn’t a good way to live your life, but it could keep you safe sometimes. Robin made a mental note to mention that thought to Batman, in case that was the point Scarecrow was trying to make.

“Batman’s busy,” Rick told Gordon. “It’s just me today. Here, take some syringes.”

“Busy?” Gordon’s eyes narrowed. “He’s been busy a lot lately. What could be more important than this?”

“Figuring out what Scarecrow’s up to and how to stop him,” Robin said, trying to put authority in his voice. Another potential effect of paranoia: driving people apart. “You stay by the door and get everyone who comes into this room inoculated. I’ll start with the armory and firing range. Who on the force can’t be trusted to help distribute the antidote?”

“Anyone detective rank or higher is fine,” Gordon said. “Not everyone below that has been vetted as thoroughly. And not all of them know how to handle a syringe, either.”

“Got it.” Rick hurried through the hellish scene, ducking wild punches and jumping over officers curled up on the floor. A lot of them were armed, but the SWAT gear and the array of guns near the firing range were the biggest dangers.

A gunshot barely missed him; Detective Montoya was standing in a corner in a mostly empty hallway, muttering to herself in Spanish and apparently shooting anything that moved. There were a few people on the floor around her who’d clearly been shot, although none of the wounds seemed likely to be fatal.

Robin hit the gun out of her hand with a batarang and she cursed, rushing at him with enough speed and force to knock him to the ground. He got the syringe in his hand into her arm and pushed the plunger, thankful once again that the antidote was an intramuscular injection and he didn’t have to spend time finding a vein.

“¡No puedes tomarme, hijo del diablo! No iré al infierno hoy… no… Robin?” Montoya scrambled off him and helped him to his feet—unnecessarily, but he let her since it might make her feel better for tackling him. “Shit, sorry. Scarecrow attack? How can I help?”

“It’s fine. Get this into anyone who’s still under the influence,” he said, giving her a handful of syringes. “And give first aid to anyone who’s injured.”

She looked around, seeing the injuries she’d caused.

“Ah, hell.”

Robin left her to it and continued towards the armory. The air became cloudier as he approached; it looked like someone had set off a tear gas grenade. He was grateful for the gas mask he wore, and for the lenses in his Robin mask. He’d complained about them before—they weren’t exactly comfortable—but B had designed them so that neither gas nor thrown sand or dirt could get in his eyes, and right now they were definitely worth it.

Still, they didn’t let him see through the clouds of gas. He hoped fear gas and tear gas didn’t interact in any unexpected ways. B must’ve tested that, right?

He moved slowly through the fog. There were people on the floor, incapacitated by the combination of terror and tear gas, and he gave each one the antidote as he passed. Once everyone was freed from the terror, they could worry about eye washes. Hopefully no one would suffer any serious damage from long-term exposure; even opening a window to try to clear the tear gas out would be too risky right now, since the fear gas in the air was probably still active.

“Don’t come any closer!” called a voice at the end of the hall. Robin thought it was Detective Bullock, but he sounded strangely muffled.

“Detective, it’s just Robin,” he responded, trying to sound soothing as he edged down the hallway. Not that it ever seemed to be possible to soothe the man. “I don’t know what you’re seeing right now, but it isn’t real—”

“I ain’t hallucinating,” Bullock snapped. “Got a gas mask on when I started hearing the screams. Just can’t see you through all this shit, is all.”

“Well, I’ve got a bunch of antidote,” Robin said as he closed the distance between them.

“My hero,” Bullock said sarcastically, although he readily accepted a handful of syringes. “Can’t just leave the antidote with us, huh? No, you and the Bat have to rush in and be heroes after the damage is already done. Where is Spooky anyway?”

“He’s not here right now, but Gordon and Montoya and I—”

“Did he finally bite it or something? Seems like he hasn’t been around at all lately.”

“No.” Rick set his jaw. Bullock always tried to get him to lose his temper, mostly because it never worked on Batman and it occasionally did work on him. Now wasn’t the time. “Take these syringes and start inoculating people, please.”

Bullock accepted some syringes and moved through the bodies on the floor quickly, administering the antidote and eyewash with surprising efficiency, considering that he continued needling Robin the whole time.

“Not that you’d tell us if he did kick the bucket, huh? Would you just show up with the ears on and pretend nothing had changed, or does he have an understudy?”

“Neither.” B had made contingency plans for his own death, of course. Rick didn’t like to think about them, so he decided to be a smartass instead. “Didn’t Gordon tell you? They picked you out to be the next Batman. Don’t worry, I’d show you the ropes.”

“Snot-nosed little punk,” Bullock growled. He turned back around, but Robin had taken a page from B’s book and had already left the room.

The rest of the cleanup wasn’t exactly a picnic, but if Gordon and Bullock hadn’t managed to stay unaffected it would have been a lot worse. Once about half the force had been inoculated, Robin gave the Commissioner the rest of the syringes and cleared out.

Some of the officers, especially the ones who had been injured, had been giving him dark looks even after they recovered. He heard some of them muttering about Batman not caring enough to come himself instead of just sending a kid, so that was gratitude for you.

Paranoia, spreading through the city. B might be unconvinced that was what the magic in the serum was causing, but Rick was positive. And considering that Batman’s whole  _ deal _ was making himself scary, that could get bad. Batman’s truce with the police, which had been in effect before Robin had even joined him, could break down completely.

Rick wasn’t sure what was scarier, the thought of having to fight a mob of basically decent Gothamites who had been pushed into fearing them or the thought of Gordon actually applying the GCPD’s resources to tracking them down. B was so careful about hiding any link to their real identities, but there was no way to hide it completely. Oracle had proven that just recently, and Ra’s al Ghul before them.

Hopefully Zatara could just come to Gotham for an afternoon and say “nwod mlac” or something and everything would go back to normal, but Rick wouldn’t be willing to bet on it.


	6. Batman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note for comics fans: I've dramatically altered the way that the emotional EM spectrum works in this setting, as part of an effort to tie together a bunch of different aspects of the setting. That's going to start to become clear in this chapter.

Batman hated watching Zatara work.

It was an odd feeling. Usually it was a pleasure to watch someone perform a skill they had mastered. Even when that skill was being used to fight him, he felt a kind of grim appreciation for the talent and artistry on display. And he did enjoy watching Zatara’s stage show. Everything Batman knew about sleight of hand and misdirection, he’d learned from Zatara, and seeing it in action was breathtaking.

He knew that Zatara was just as much a master of actual magic, because he’d seen the effects of his magic in practice before. That didn’t mean it actually looked like anything to him, though. Zatara chanted, drew sigils, placed candles and crystals, moved his hands in ways that hurt Batman’s head if he looked at them too hard, and all of it was and would always be gibberish to him.

It had him on edge—well, theoretically magical paranoia had him on edge, but having to just sit there and watch things he didn’t understand didn’t help. He trusted Zatara as much as he trusted anyone other than Alfred and Rick, but if the magician decided to turn on him, he would be powerless to stop him. Even if he noticed something was happening, there was only one exit, and it was a door Zatara usually kept magically locked. There weren’t even any windows, just a closet that inexplicably led to another room when Zatara opened it (but not when anyone else did.) It would have been a perfect trap.

“The magic is definitely working to enhance and extend the effects of the toxin,” Zatara said after a while. “Everything I’ve been able to tease out points to subtle, extended paranoia continuing after the acute symptoms have ceased. It’s quite ingenious, really. If the person who did this had only applied their talents in a more constructive field, they could do a great deal of good.”

“So it is still affecting me? Can you undo the effects?”

“I could, but…” Zatara frowned. “The fact that it took a chemical route into your brain and your psyche would make it extremely difficult to do precisely. I would essentially be doing magical psychiatry, and that’s certainly not my expertise. I don’t think it’s _anyone’s_ expertise. I’ll need more time to fine-tune a solution, or I could end up making you dangerously fear _less_.

Batman sighed.

“How much more time?” he asked.

“I really don’t know.”

“Then I’m going back to Gotham,” Batman said, getting up from where he sat on the floor in the center of a nine-pointed star. “As long as you’re sure lingering paranoia is the only effect, I can deal with it.”

“At least stay the night,” Zatara offered. “I may not be able to create a complete solution in such a short timeframe, but I should be able to adapt a spell to create an amulet to ward off curses. I’ll only be able to make a limited number of them, but the wearers will be shielded from the effects of the spell. I’ll need Zatanna to assist, though, and we’ll have to do the working at midnight.”

Of course. There was a seventeen-year-old protecting Gotham and there would be a fifteen-year-old working on the cure, but all Batman could do was sit in the center of a star.

“How limited a number?” he asked. Complaining wouldn’t help anything. “Because if the problem is a shortage of materials—”

“Nine,” Zatara said. “No, I have what I need, although there will be some rather expensive crystals involved.”

“I’ll pay you back, of course.” Right. Nine was a magical number, and Zatara couldn’t explain why, except that it had to do with color and something about life goals. He’d been informed that of the mages he knew, Zatara and Zatanna were both “blue” mages and Jason Blood was a “white” mage, but when father and daughter worked together they functioned as both “blue” and “orange” mages.

He’d asked if the fact that blue and orange were complementary colors meant anything. Apparently it did not.

Another copy of Zatara, this one dressed in his full stage clothes instead of just a button-down shirt and slacks, entered the room.

“How did the show go, dear?” the casually-dressed Zatara asked, kissing himself on the cheek.

“The great Giovanni Zatara knocked ‘em dead, of course,” the formally-dressed Zatara said.

Batman particularly hated illusion magic. Of course, that was Zatara’s specialty. Not that he had any evidence, really, that either of the people in the room were actually Zatara.

“I think you’re giving Mr. Wayne a headache, my dear,” the casual Zatara said.

“Oh!” The formally-dressed Zatara blushed shyly, a strange expression on that composed middle-aged face, and melted into a teenage girl in jeans and a t-shirt. “Hi, Mr. Wayne. I hope dad’s been able to help you.”

“He’s working on it,” Bruce said with a reassuring smile. “Thanks for running the show for him.”

“Oh, we do it all the time,” she said, waving her hand dismissively and audibly trying to sound casual rather than proud. “It keeps dad from getting bored doing the show over and over, and it’s good practice for me. Of course, the show would be twice as good if dad let me be his assistant.”

“I’m not having you ogled by crowds before you’re 18,” Zatara said, clearly repeating an argument he’d made many times before. “After that it’s your choice. Is your homework finished? I’m going to need your help with a ritual tonight.”

“Really? Awesome! I just have a few things to finish up. I can go get it and do it in here, if you and Mr. Wayne don’t mind?” She looked at Bruce hopefully.

“I don’t mind at all,” Bruce said reassuringly, and she ran off to get her homework. He didn’t remember her being this shy. She may have developed a bit of a crush on him. It was always tricky to balance being kind to a teenager with a crush on him with absolutely not encouraging them in any way.

“You can get out of the enneagram now, if you like,” Zatara said. “Until 11:30 or so, anyway.”

Bruce rose and retrieved his laptop. Soon the room was nearly silent, with Zatara etching symbols into nine quarter-sized pieces of polished jet, Zatanna doing what looked like math homework, and Bruce taking care of some Wayne Enterprises business.

When he’d done about as much as he could on a less-secure-than-he’d-like network, Bruce sighed and shut the laptop. It still wasn’t quite 10. He’d offer to help Zatara, but he knew it would be pointless.

“Need any help with your homework?” he asked Zatanna. “Seems like the least I can do.”

“Oh! No, no, I’m done anyway,” she said, blushing again. “Dad’s been teaching me about Norse runes, so I’m working on that right now.”

“Right,” Bruce said with a sigh. “Something I can’t help with.”

“Sorry,” she said. She did sound sorry.

“I’ve come to terms with it,” he said lightly. “Have you figured out what color the mage you’re dealing with is?”

“Probably red, right, dad?” Zatanna said. “I mean, definitely red, orange, yellow, or blue.”

“Red,” Zatara said, not looking up from his etching. “It’s the strangest application of magic I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely red.”

“Most of the bad ones are red,” Zatanna said. She sounded proud to be showing off her knowledge. “But some of them are orange, yellow, or blue, and a few are green or white.”

“So does ‘black magic’ not exist?” Bruce asked.

“Oh, a black mage would definitely be dangerous if you attacked them, but if you leave them alone they’re harmless,” she said. “They’re too internally focused to cause much trouble.”

“I see,” said Bruce, who didn’t. She reminded him of Rick, all enthusiasm and youthful confidence, and if he thought too much about Rick right now he’d start worrying about him patrolling alone tonight and that wouldn’t help anyone. If all he could do until 11:30 was entertain Zatanna, then that was what he would do.

“You remember that guy who used to live in Coast City and do all that stuff with green light?” Zatanna asked. “Dad checked him out, and he was definitely using technology and not magic, but it was still green-aligned the way green magic would be. I think the colors might be, like, more basic than magic. Like, the colors are part of the underlying structure of the universe, and magic is just one way to tap into that.”

“And as I’ve told you,” Zatara interjected, “if that’s true then every mage for thousands of years has been wrong about a fundamental aspect of magic. Green Lantern was using technology to simulate green magic somehow.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” Bruce told Zatanna. “But if it’s true, then shouldn’t I be able to understand the colors more than I do?”

“We might just be bad at explaining it to someone who can’t use magic,” Zatanna said, but she seemed put-out by her father’s dismissal.

“Well, why don’t you work on that when you have some time? If you come up with something that might make sense to me, I’d love to hear it,” Bruce said. “In the meantime, if your Norse runes can wait, would you like to learn how to punch?”

“Hell yes!” Zatanna said, jumping to her feet.

“Is it going to hurt her?” Zatara asked, frowning.

“If she practices hard, she might get some calluses on her knuckles,” Bruce said. “But no, a properly-thrown punch against a surface with some give isn’t going to hurt her.”

“I will definitely practice,” Zatanna said. “We can get a punching bag. It’ll be good exercise.”

“All right,” Zatara said reluctantly. “But be ready to get to work at 11:30. Don’t tire yourself out.”

Bruce got to his feet and started showing Zatanna how to make a proper fist.

The lesson went by quickly, although Zatanna seemed frustrated by how slowly she made progress. Presumably she was used to picking things up very quickly, since she actually wasn’t doing badly at all. Bruce drilled her for an hour, hopefully getting the proper technique ingrained in her well enough that she wouldn’t develop bad habits when she started practicing on her own.

He didn’t get a lot of opportunities to teach, and he missed it, he realized. He still gave R pointers, but there weren’t really any skills left that he hadn’t taught him at all. None that he planned to teach, anyway. Well, he might teach Rick how to fight while drugged once the kid was a little older and his brain wasn’t still developing, but if he wanted practical lessons in how to withstand torture, he’d have to find someone else to teach him.

“Now, don’t go looking for fights,” he cautioned Zatanna as 11:30 neared. “This is for self-defense, understand? And it’s still better to run than to fight, if you have the option.”

“But someday I might not,” she said. “Thanks for teaching me. I should go change.”

“I guess I should get back in the star,” Bruce sighed.

They finished setting up a bit before midnight. Zatara was in his stage clothes, and Zatanna was wearing a tuxedo-looking top with a knee-length skirt. Bruce decided not to bother asking why Zatara needed a cummerbund to do magic, or why they were both wearing top hats.

A piece of inscribed jet sat at each concave vertex of the star, and candles burned at each point: black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and white. The two white candles looked identical to Bruce, but when Zatara and Zatanna chanted something, the flame of each candle turned the same color as the candle itself, and looking at one of the white flames—but not the other—hurt his eyes.

Goddamn magic.

The chanting went on for several moments, in a language that sounded something like Latin, but certainly wasn’t. Zatara and Zatanna traced shaped in the air in unison, and the flames of the candles followed the movements of their hands. Finally the chanting came to an end, and everything was still and silent.

“Concentrate on fear,” Zatara instructed.

That shouldn’t be too hard. Bruce ought to close his eyes to do this properly, but the thought of being cut off from his surroundings like that—even if none of the visual information was of any use to him—was intolerable.

He thought about R, swinging through the streets of Gotham on his own. What if he fell and no one was there to catch him? What if he got blasted by Scarecrow toxin with no one there to administer the antidote? Or it could just be a punk with a gun, just another punk with a gun in Crime Alley—

“Fear for yourself, too,” Zatara said. Bruce noticed that the orange and purple candles were burning higher than the rest, while the red and black ones was almost guttering out. Red was bad, right? Hopefully that was a good sign. “Not just for others.”

That was harder. Bruce cast about for something that he still personally feared, but he’d spent so long facing and fighting and triumphing over anything that he personally was afraid of that there was barely anything left. What danger had he not already faced?

The alien, he thought suddenly; the one who lived in Metropolis and called himself Superman. Bruce had managed to find a piece of Kryptonite on the black market a few years ago, but he kept it in the Cave; if the alien decided one night that it would be best if Batman was dead, there were a hundred ways he could do it before Bruce could do anything about it.

And so many people feared Batman but loved Superman. Cops, civilians, the news; even Rick had some notebooks with that ridiculous S logo on them. Maybe even Rick liked Superman better, maybe Superman could take him away—

“Perfect,” Zatara said. He and Zatanna began to chant again, this time starting out quietly but rising in waves with the motions of their hands. The candles flared higher and higher until they nearly touched the ceiling, then began to spin, forming a cylinder of stripes of colored fire around Bruce. He couldn’t see the two magicians any more, just hear their voices rising and falling in that chant.

In unison, the two shouted a word, and with a crackle of flames the cylinder fractured into nine rainbows that seemed to race straight towards Bruce for a moment before being diverted and pulled into the engraved stones.

The jet glowed for a moment, then dimmed, and the room was in darkness.


	7. Bruce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. Should go back to Saturday/Wednesday after this.

Less than half an hour after the end of the ritual, Bruce was back on a plane to Gotham. Zatara had made each piece of jet into an amulet, setting them on chains that could easily be hidden under clothing.

“It needs to be touching the skin,” he cautioned. “I’ll keep working on a more widely-useful solution. Hopefully I’ll have an answer for you in a few days, but it could take longer.”

“I understand,” Bruce said. He shook hands with both of the magicians; Zatanna looked pleased at being treated like an adult. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

The moment Bruce slipped the amulet on, he felt different. It was hard to describe the effect exactly; the closest comparison he could come up with was the feeling of relief when something you’ve been worried about turns out fine. He was still worried about Rick (and about Superman; there had to be something he could do about that, beyond just keeping a chunk of space rock in storage…) but it was much more manageable.

That clearly indicated that his judgement had been clouded ever since he’d been hit with the Scarecrow toxin, and that meant he had work to do.

Safely on the jet, with no one else on board but the pilot, he closed his eyes.

_ In the darkness behind his eyelids, he imagined a familiar table of dark, heavy wood, and two high-backed chairs. There was no background to the scene, just a diffuse light coming from overhead. He had imagined it many times over the years: the meeting room. _

_ Bruce, in khaki pants and a polo, sat in one of the chairs. Batman sat in the other. He was wearing the Batsuit, and there was only the merest suggestion of a face behind the cowl. _

_ “You think I need your help on this?” Batman asked. “I have everything under control.” _

_ “Paranoia—or vigilance, if you’d rather—is your department,” Bruce said. “But your judgment has been compromised by externally-induced paranoia. You need to re-evaluate the decisions you’ve made since then, and you need me to balance out the extra paranoia.” _

_ “That’s not your job,” Batman said. He always wanted to stick to the letter of the law in the agreement between them, much more so than Bruce. “You take care of interpersonal relationships, you remind me to eat or sleep if I’m distracted, and you experience positive emotions so that we maintain healthy brain chemistry. You  _ don’t _ second-guess me.” _

_ “We haven’t been maintaining healthy brain chemistry,” Bruce pointed out. “Scarecrow threw off our equilibrium. I’m just getting us back on track.” _

_ “I’m not going over every moment I’ve been in charge for the past few weeks with you—” _

_ “I’m not asking you to. Just major decisions. Coming here, for one. That was a good idea,” Bruce said placatingly. _

_ “But you don’t think I made the right call with Oracle,” Batman concluded. “That’s what you’re trying to get at, isn’t it?” _

_ “It’s a decision you made while under the influence of a malign external force,” Bruce said. “I just think we should re-examine it.” _

_ “They know who we are, and we don’t know who they are. That’s not an acceptable situation.” _

_ “I’m not saying you should just accept it. But ignoring them, and the information they have, isn’t going to help,” Bruce pointed out. “You know Rick agrees with me.” _

_ “Robin always agrees with you,” Batman grumbled. “You’re the fun dad.” _

_ “That’s part of my job. You know you couldn’t be the one in charge of him all the time. And don’t change the subject,” Bruce said. “I’m not saying you should trust them completely, but you could try to work together. I mean, Jim doesn’t know who you are and he’s willing to trust you.” _

_ “I’ve proven myself trustworthy,” Batman said. “Oracle hasn’t.” _

_ “You’re not giving them a chance to.” _

_ “I am giving them a chance. They could just tell me who they are,” Batman said. _

_ “Because you definitely would have done that, if Jim had demanded it.” Bruce paused. “Actually, I think he  _ did _ demand it, and you said no, and he figured out how to work with you anyway.” _

_ Unlike some systems, Bruce and Batman shared nearly all of their memories. The only exception was the night of their parents’ death, which Batman kept to himself. Bruce was fine with that. _

_ (That had been when the two had split. The first gunshot rang out and his father fell and Bruce went somewhere else, left someone else in charge of his body while it ran and hid behind a dumpster until the police arrived. That someone hadn’t had a name yet, but now he was Batman.) _

_ “How about this,” Batman proposed. “I’ll go through the information Oracle sent us on Scarecrow and see whether it suggests that they were hiding the magical aspect, or just unaware of it. If I can’t tell, I’ll send it to Zatara for a second opinion. If it seems like they were unaware, I’ll tell them about it, get a mutual information exchange going. We can see how things go from there.” _

_ “That seems fair,” Bruce agreed. _

He opened his eyes, smiling to himself. It wasn’t often that he got to talk Batman into being less paranoid. Honestly, sometimes his other half seemed to see Bruce as little more than a mask to hide behind.

The child psychologists who talked to him after his parents died had talked about disassociation like it was a bad thing. Even then, Bruce had known that if he wanted to fulfill his Mission while remaining a whole person, he would need to divide the responsibilities between the two of them. Bruce was the reason they could keep fighting, keep living, night after night and day after day, without being crushed by the weight of problems yet unsolved.

They needed each other, and Batman had damn well better remember it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there you have it: the big difference between my Batman and other interpretations of the character, spelled out explicitly (although it's been hinted at before, and if you go back and look at when he's referred to as Batman and when he's referred to as Bruce, I've done my best to lowkey keep the division clear.) If you don't know much about multiplicity, [this faq](http://solipsistful.weebly.com/faq.html) is a pretty good overview; if you'd rather get your info in the form of a fanfic, ["The Many Faces of Har--er, Adira Potter"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394258/) is fantastic. I'm also multie, and happy to answer any respectful questions in the comments.


	8. Robin

It was nice to have a chance to be the one who was right about everything. Usually that was B. Rick tried not to act too smug about it.

“It’s too bad more than nine people have been affected,” he said. “We ought to give at least some of those amulets to the police.”

(Having to report that he’d failed to prevent the attack on police HQ had definitely helped with the not-acting-smug thing.)

“We should keep one in case you need it, and one in case of emergencies,” B said. “With the one I’m wearing, that leaves six for the police. It’ll have to be enough. You drop them off. I want another look at the Oracle info. They gave us a record of Scarecrow’s spending, and I want to see if anything on it looks like magic supplies.”

“You should probably drop them off yourself,” Rick suggested. “Some of the cops are getting kind of antsy about just seeing me all the time. Bullock asked if you were dead.”

Bruce snorted.

“You go through the spending, then,” he said. “You know what to look for? Crystals, herbs, candles, costumes—other than the ones he and his henchmen are wearing, that is.”

“I’ll flag anything that looks suspicious,” Rick promised. “You can check it when you get back, and I guess we can send it to the Z’s if it’s not clear.”

“Right,” Bruce agreed. “Zatanna says hi, by the way.”

“Cool, cool.” There was no chance Gordon would give an amulet to Barbara, was there? No, he wouldn’t want to prioritize his family over the police force. She’d be stuck paranoid until Zatara came up with a more wide-reaching solution.

Batman left as soon as it was dark, heading towards the police station. Rick got to work on the files.

Most of Scarecrow’s spending was on the precursor chemicals for his fear toxin, of course. But Rick had overlooked some other stuff when he’d gone through it before. Different colors of high-quality chalk, for one thing. No candles exactly, but he had bought wax and wicks and dye, the kinds of things you’d need to stock up a candle-making kit. Nothing obvious like a bunch of crystals or weird herbs or anything, but unless Crane had developed a recent interest in arts and crafts, those definitely seemed like they could be magic supplies.

“Seems plausible,” Batman agreed when Robin caught up to him on patrol and made his report (after helping him break up a gang fight). “So it’s more likely that Oracle didn’t know about the magic than that they were hiding it.”

“I guess they could have been testing us, to see if we’d pick up on it,” Robin suggested reluctantly. His gut still told him to trust Oracle, but he didn’t want to be careless.

“Hm. Seems too obvious to be a test if they think one of us is a mage, and too subtle to be a good test if not. But you could be right. Send them a message—a friendly exchange of information, letting them know about the magical aspect—but don’t let them know about the help we’re getting from Zatara. See how they react.”

“Right now?” Robin protested. “Patrol isn’t done—”

“You’ve been covering for me too much lately. It’s my turn,” Batman said. “Go home, send the message, and go to bed. I know you  _ could _ stay out longer, but you don’t have to, and I want you rested for the next crisis.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rick conceded. He would have argued more, but he knew B’d had a chance to rest while Zatara worked and on the jet, and he himself was tired enough that he felt it in his bones. “One more fight first?”

“One more fight or half an hour, whichever comes first,” B said.

A faint scream came from a nearby park.

“Sounds like it’s going to be the fight,” Robin said as they swung towards the sound.

When the screamer was safe and their attacker was tied up and dangling from a streetlight, Rick headed home to get on the Oracle-compromised laptop.

> Oracle,
> 
> I know we left things on kind of a sour note, but I wanted to let you know, the toxin Scarecrow’s using has a magical component. The antidote still fixes the panic and the hallucinations, but anyone who’s been exposed since the attack on Vreeland Academy (and maybe earlier) is going to be experiencing lingering paranoia. That includes a lot of the GCPD now, so watch your back if you’re going to keep hacking into their files.
> 
> Robin

He was going to head to bed immediately after sending it, but he checked his own computer for a moment, and found that Babs had just sent him a message.

**choose_a_foma** : Hey Rick, I need to ask you a really important question.

**alwaysbeflipping:** shoot

**choose_a_foma** : I need to know you’re not going to just say what you think I want to hear. You’ve got to be 100% serious. Think about it overnight if you have to.

**alwaysbeflipping:** sure, i promise

**alwaysbeflipping:** is everything okay?

**choose_a_foma** : Things are super not okay. But don’t worry about that right now.

**choose_a_foma** : ...dammit I can’t think of a way to phrase this that doesn’t sound stupid

**choose_a_foma** : I need you to take it seriously, though.

**alwaysbeflipping:** I will, Babs. I swear.

**choose_a_foma** : Okay

**choose_a_foma** : So imagine you found out I had some kind of power or skill, like I could read minds or shoot lasers out of my eyes or something.

**alwaysbeflipping:** okay…

**choose_a_foma** : I told you it would sound stupid.

**alwaysbeflipping:** I’m taking it seriously, though. Imagining Babs the mind-reader.

**choose_a_foma** : Okay. So if I had an awesome power or skill, would you take it seriously? Would you take *me* seriously? Not just as your friend, but as like… a superhero.

**choose_a_foma** : Like I said, weird question. Sleep on it if you need to.

Babs’ Scarecrow-induced paranoia was clearly going in weird directions. But really, there was only one answer to her question.

**alwaysbeflipping:** Babs

**alwaysbeflipping:** I don’t need to think about it.

**alwaysbeflipping:** I will always take you seriously. I’ll always believe you about what you can do.

**choose_a_foma** : You promise?

**alwaysbeflipping:** 100%

**alwaysbeflipping:** so can i ask about why things are super not okay now?

**choose_a_foma** : Well

**choose_a_foma** : I just found out that I’m under the influence of paranoia-causing magic

**choose_a_foma** : And I can’t be sure and I’m totally second-guessing myself right now, but…

**choose_a_foma** : I think that’s the only reason I haven’t told you I’m Oracle.

**alwaysbeflipping:** holy

**alwaysbeflipping:** fucking

**alwaysbeflipping:** shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody reading this doing NaNo? This is my first one! I'm [Vigs](https://nanowrimo.org/participants/vigs) on there if anyone wants to be writing buddies. I'll be working on an original fiction project, but don't worry, I have enough of a buffer to keep updating twice a week anyway.


	9. Oracle

Barbara had been to Wayne Manor once before, when she and Rick and some other people had a group project. She’d been nervous then, because she knew it was an old house and she expected that even getting into it was going to involve something humiliating like being carried up the stairs, but to her surprise there had been an ADA-compliant ramp to the front door. It fit in with the overall aesthetic, but it had clearly been installed within the past few months, sometime since she and Rick had started talking. She’d been touched.

That had been ages ago, before she figured out that Rick and Bruce were Batman and Robin. Otherwise she would have been nervous for different reasons.

She was definitely nervous on her second visit to Wayne Manor, because she knew exactly who she was going to visit and they knew exactly who she was. She took a deep breath at the bottom of the ramp.

Robin was Rick, she reminded herself. He was Rick, and she trusted Rick, and the fear she was feeling was being magically amplified. Rick believed in her, and Rick trusted Bruce, and hopefully Bruce would trust Rick’s judgement of her and everything would be okay.

The door opened and a white-haired man with a thin mustache—Alfred, she reminded herself—stepped out.

“Are you in need of assistance, Miss Gordon?” he asked, and she bristled.

“I’m fine,” she said, and rolled up the ramp. She was somewhat mollified by the fact that he made no move to try to “help” her anyway.

“Master Bruce and Master Rick are in the front sitting room,” he told her once she’d reached the top. He held the door for her, but he probably did that for everyone. “May I take your coat?”

She took her coat off and handed it to him. He didn’t try to help her with that either, so she forgave him for his earlier offer.

“Right this way,” Alfred said, and led her to the front sitting room.

Rick and Mr. Wayne were there, Rick sitting on a sofa, Wayne just sort of standing there. She’d met Bruce Wayne before, and he’d always been smiling, affable, and courteous. This man’s face was an expressionless mask.

“Hey, Babs,” Rick said. He looked very uncertain how to handle this situation. “Uh, before we talk about stuff I guess you should put this on. It’ll take care of the paranoia. Don’t let your dad see it; we gave him a bunch of them, so he’d know what it is.”

He handed her a necklace with a black stone at the end of it, polished smooth on one side and intricately engraved on the other. As soon as the stone touched her skin, she relaxed… a little. Most of the fear she was feeling was completely rational.

Mr. Wayne was still staring silently at her.

“Thanks,” she said. “So uh… you know who I am now. I hope that means we can work together.”

“Yeah!” Rick seemed enthused by the idea. “Seriously, I knew you were smart and I knew you were good with computers, but I had no idea  _ how _ good. Those files you put together are incredible, and now that we know we can trust them, they’re going to be such a big help.”

“I hope so,” she said. “I want to help. I know what a big difference you two have made in this city. I can make a difference too.”

“Definitely!” Rick agreed.

Barbara turned to Mr. Wayne—to Batman. Clearly he was the one she’d have to win over.

“Mr. Wayne, I know I’m just a teenager, but so is Rick. And I hope you know my other abilities have nothing to do with my hacking abilities.” She met his eyes and refused to look away.

“You don’t like me,” he said. “Even when we met before, you didn’t like me. Had you already figured out that I was Batman?”

“No,” she said. She wouldn’t be the first to look away, she  _ wouldn’t _ . “I only figured out that you were Batman because at that point I thought you were abusing Rick.”

“What?” Rick exclaimed. “Why would you think that?”

Before Rick finished speaking, Mr. Wayne was nodding, slowly and grimly.

“The cuts and bruises,” he said. “The absences from school. The history of broken bones.”

“I had to find proof,” she explained. “Nobody was going to believe me without evidence. You could’ve ended my dad’s career if I’d tried to come forward. So I started digging, looking for patterns. I thought maybe the days he came in bruised up would correspond with days that Wayne Enterprises stock dropped, or that there’d be stretches of him being okay when you were seeing someone regularly. Something like that.”

“And what did you find?” Mr. Wayne asked.

“At first I thought it was a correspondence between his injuries and crimes committed on Wayne Enterprises property. But I knew I was missing something, so I started digging deeper into the police files to see if there was some other pattern. And once it occured to me…” She shrugged. “Both of you have the motivation from your histories. There aren’t any reports of Robin until a few months after you adopted Rick. Robin’s estimated age has always roughly matched Rick’s. Rick is unusually physically fit, even for a gymnast. There aren’t a lot of pictures of Batman and Robin, but witness descriptions match your heights and skin tones. The injuries matched up perfectly with reports of vigilante activity.”

“You’re a good friend to him,” Mr. Wayne noted.

“Yeah, I am,” Barbara said. She stuck her chin out. “And I’m still not sure about you, just for the record. Taking a preteen to a gunfight is reckless endangerment.”

“Babs, no,” Rick protested. “I was going to be out there no matter what. B showed me how to do it safely.”

“Broken  _ bones _ , Rick,” she said.

“As safely as possible,” he conceded. “B’s the best. Really.”

“We’ll see,” she said. She crossed her arms. “So are we going to work together or what?”

Mr. Wayne nodded.

“I think it’s time for you to see the Cave,” he said, and smiled slightly.

Barbara had known that they must have some place to store the car, the gadgets, and the serious computer equipment that she knew Batman had. She had not expected to be led to what was clearly a hastily-converted dumbwaiter—definitely not how the two of them customarily accessed the “Cave”—and then lowered down, down, down below the foundations of the mansion.

There was literally a cave full of bats under Wayne Manor. Bats and other things.

Rick was there as soon as she reached the bottom.

“I know you’re going to want to see the computer first, but there’s a bunch of other cool stuff too,” he said. “All the gear, a bunch of experimental gear B’s working on, our costumes—”

“Why do you dress up in bright colors anyway?” Barbara interrupted. She’d always wondered. “It doesn’t seem very practical.”

“Oh, you’ve  _ got _ to see this,” he said, and ran off—leaving her alone with Mr. Wayne.

“I’m glad it was you,” he said before the silence could become awkward. “He trusts you. I trust his judgement.”

“He was really going to go out and fight on his own if you didn’t train him?” she asked.

“He  _ did _ . Almost got himself killed,” Mr. Wayne told her. Bruce, she should think of him as Bruce or as Batman if they were going to be working together. She refused to be intimidated by the fact that he was an adult or a billionaire or the goddamn Batman. “I told him I’d train him as long as he didn’t do it again until I said he was ready. I thought he’d give up once he realized how hard it was.”

“But he didn’t.”

“He didn’t,” Bruce said. He sounded exasperated and proud. “He passed every test I could come up with. He knew more about keeping himself alive when he started as Robin than I did when I started as Batman.”

“Seriously?” she asked, skeptical.

“I had other priorities in my own training,” he said.

Rick ran back to join them, wearing the distinctive Robin suit—red shirt, black cape lined with yellow, green sleeves, gloves, and pants, all much more heavily armored than it looked from a distance—without the mask. She’d known it was him, of course, but it was still sort of a shock, seeing her friend’s grinning face over that symbol.

“Okay, check this out,” he said, and fiddled with something in one of his gloves.

The color immediately bled out of his costume, leaving him clad in irregularly patterned shades of mottled grey.

“Urban camouflage,” he explained. “Blends in even better than black.”

“Why have the bright colors at all, then?” she asked.

“Sometimes it’s good if one of us can be all ‘hey, over here, look at me!’ and since B’s job is being scary, that’s my job,” he explained. “Plus nobody’s looking for greyscale Robin. I make sure people only ever see the colored version.”

“That sounds unnecessarily complicated,” she said.

“It really works, though,” he assured her. “Oh! I have to show you the giant penny! B didn’t want to bring it back here and getting it here was a pain in the ass, but it was  _ so  _ worth it, it looks awesome.”

“Why would you have a giant penny?” she asked, amused.

“Oh, Two-Face captured us and tied me to one side and B to the other. I don’t know where he even got it. He was going to flip it with this ridiculous catapult thing. Honestly I don’t know where they get half this stuff. We found the tailor who makes the custom suits for the Joker and Two-Face and all a while back, but we decided not to bother him because then they’d probably bully some other tailor into doing it.”

Barbara took one last wary look over her shoulder. Bruce was leaning against the wall, smiling as he watched Rick lead her around. He showed every appearance of being a genuinely decent guy who cared about Rick and cared about the city… and spent a lot of his time dressing like a bat and punching people.

Well, she was in now. She could witness it firsthand. And if it turned out that he  _ was _ abusing Rick after all, she’d be able to get him locked up for vigilantism even if she could never prove the abuse. As long as she figured it out before Rick turned 18, he should be okay.

Even with those concerns weighing on her, she couldn’t seem to stop smiling. There were places online where she was recognized as someone brilliant and capable, but none of the people there knew that she was a teenage girl. People who could actually see her might accept that she was smart, but none of them knew that other side of her. Rick, after some understandable initial surprise, seemed to have accepted it completely. He looked almost giddy,  telling the stories behind various other trophies and expounding on the ways Oracle might be able to help their future work.

He knew her completely now, and he still liked her. By all appearances, he might like her even  _ more _ .

Back when they’d been getting to know each other, she’d told him that she wasn’t there so he could get his picture in the paper for taking the girl in the wheelchair to prom. She’d had people ask her out before, out of pity or on dares, and she’d had her disdainful expression prepared in case Rick did it too.

She might need to figure out some new facial expressions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post again! To make up for it, this is sort of a double-post. You don't need to read it to understand anything that's happened or anything that's coming, but I've posted [Zatanna's report on magic and color](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561334/chapters/38804078) for anyone who's interested.


End file.
